Finishing the Venue

WARNING: Creating your own venue from scratch requires the use of cheat codes as indicated and might cause some damage to your save files. Before attempting this, you may want to backup your saves to a different folder.

We're going to making heavy use of cheat codes here, so let's once again go over how to use them. First, you hold CTRL and SHIFT, then press the C key. This makes the console appear at the top of the screen, and you'll type specific phrases here. When you press Enter, the cheat will go through. If it worked, the entire console will simply disappear. If the code was rejected (for example, if you misspelled something), you'll get an error message and the console will remain open. You can force the console closed by again pressing CTRL, SHIFT, and C.

The codes are not case-sensitive, so all three of these codes would work the same way:

TESTINGcheatsENABLED on

testingcheatsenabled on

teSTingCheATsENAbleD on

To make it easier to read, we'll intercapitalize the words, but know you don't have to. Also, for the off/on arguments, you can do them in three ways: off/on, false/true, or 0/1. So all three of these codes would work the same way:

testingCheatsEnabled on

testingCheatsEnabled true

testingCheatsEnabled 1

We'll be going with off/on for simplicity, but you can use any of the argument pairs that you wish.

All codes and arguments are typed without quotes in the console.

Remember that we need two cheat codes on in order for any work to be done here. The codes are, in order:

Right now, the stage is ready to be used. However, there is one final little addition you may want to apply. As it stands, our stage is sitting on the grassy plain, which means any lighting it would have would have to come from the performer's props, which may or may not be enough. We can place an invisible light source above the stage to make sure our performer is easily seen.

Although beauty is in the eye of the beholder, most stages want to accent the performer rather than the audience. As such, you'll want the light rings over the stage while leaving the audience in the dark. Remember that the light rings are always at maximum brightness and cannot be changed like conventional lights. If you want the audience to be lit up at all, it's best to use conventional lighting and keep it dim if you wish to keep your venue realistic.

Lighting rings are found in the Debug sort of Buy Mode, just like audience zones and the stage. Look at the icon rows near the top, but note that the light rings do not have the aforementioned blue Showtime symbol. Take a look at the screenshot; the icons circled in red are the light rings...

Remember that you can also mouse-over the icons and get descriptions, just like any other item. We're looking for the largest light ring, which is a couple icons to the right, and it's 4x4 tiles...

Unlike conventional lights, light rings can be placed literally anywhere in-bounds: they don't require ceiling tiles or floor tiles, and they can even placed over two different tiles of two different altitudes. After switching to Night Mode, we can place a single light ring in such a way that the stage is mostly covered, with a little bit of light touching our front row tables...

Some stages, like the EA-created one at the park, have multiple light rings in certain placements to give a more even lighting scheme. Still other stages could make use of rectangular lights so the lighting is a bit more controlled. And if your venue is already bright enough, there's no reason to use any of these light rings at all.

Note that even if you set up your tables correctly, there's a chance they'll temporarily fade away. This is by design: it simulates that some audience members just don't want to sit down or if they're in the way.

Once you finish up your venue, you'll need to wait for several Sim hours before the game recognizes it's there. You can visit it immediately with your family, but you'll need to wait until the game spawns a proprietor before you can audition. However, even for as little work as we've done on it, the venue is usable right now: all it needs is a stage and some audience zones. Sure, if we leave it like this, we're going to have a mess of unhappy people since there aren't any bathrooms, shops, places to eat, or anything else. But as far as our singer cares, it does work.

As long as you have a performer as your selected Sim, keep an eye on the lot in map view. Eventually, you'll see the telltale tag that a proprietor has settled in. You might want to wait a full day to audition just to avoid problems (especially if you created the venue in the middle of the day), but it's not necessary. Soon, you'll be able to perform there like any other venue, and you'll have one more stop on your tour of success!